title: Moderators of correctional treatment success: an exploratory study of racial differences.
abstract: An important area in correctional rehabilitation research is to better understand how offenders differentially respond to correctional treatments. Potential treatment moderators forwarded in the literature are gender, race/ethnicity, and personality types. This exploratory study asked whether a group of parolees had demographic and personality moderators of treatment and, if so, were the moderating influences different by race? An experimental design was used to randomly assign a sample of 937 male parolees (n = 658 African American, n = 279 White) to the experimental group that received the cognitive-behavioral treatment program and the control group that did not. Discrete-time event history analysis independently tested the program-moderating effects of demographic and personality characteristics (age, prior employment status, educational attainment, marital status, social class, risk of recidivism, prior violence, IQ, reading level, cognitive maturity, personality type, residential urbanization) on recidivism for African American and White parolees. This study found that the age group and personality type of the parolees interacted with the cognitive-behavioral program in ways that created racially disparate recidivism outcomes.
authors.affiliation: California State University, Fullerton, CA, USA gspiropoulos@fullerton.edu.
authors.forename: Georgia V
authors.initials: GV
authors.lastname: Spiropoulos
authors.affiliation: Portland State University, OR, USA.
authors.forename: Emily J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Salisbury
authors.affiliation: University of Cincinnati, OH, USA.
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Van Voorhis
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology*; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D015928:Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; D005845:Georgia; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011329:Prisoners / Q000523:psychology*; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: cognitive-behavioral program; correctional treatment; principles of effective intervention; race; reasoning & rehabilitation program; responsivity